A Grid-Enabled Infrastructure for Resource Sharing, E-Learning, Searching and Distributed Repository Among Universities

In the recent years, service-based approaches for sharing of data among repositories and online learning are rising to prominence because of their potential to meet the requirements in the area of high performance computing. Developing education based grid services and assuring high availability reliability and scalability are demanding in web service architectures. On the other hand, grid computing provides flexibility towards aggregating distributed CPU, memory, storage, data and supports large number of distributed resource sharing to provide the full potential for education like applications to share the knowledge that can be attainable on any single system. However, the literature shows that the potential of grid resources for educational purposes is not being utilized yet. In this paper, an education based grid framework architecture that provides promising platform to support sharing of geographically dispersed learning content among universities is developed. It allows students, faculty and researchers to share and gain knowledge in their area of interest by using e-learning, searching and distributed repository services among universities from anywhere, anytime. Globus toolkit 5.2.5 (GTK) software is used as grid middleware that provides resource access, discovery and management, data movement, security, and so forth. Furthermore, this work uses the OGSA-DAI that provides database access and operations. The resulting infrastructure enables users to discover education services and interact with them using the grid portal

The Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC): A Collaborative Teaching and Research Initiative

The networked environment forced a sea change in Library and Information Science (LIS) education. Most LIS programs offer a mixed-mode of instruction that integrates online learning materials with more traditional classroom pedagogical methods and faculty are now responsible for developing content and digital learning objects. The teaching commons in a networked environment is one way to share, modify and repurpose learning objects while reducing the costs to educational institutions of developing course materials totally inhouse. It also provides a venue for sharing ideas, practices, and expertise in order to provide the best learning experience for students. Because metadata education has been impacted by rapid changes and metadata research is interdisciplinary and diffuse, the Metadata Education and Research Information Commons (MERIC) initiative aims to provide a virtual environment for sharing and collaboration within the extensive metadata community. This paper describes the development of MERIC from its origin as a simple clearinghouse proof-of-concept project to a service-oriented teaching and research commons prototype. The problems of enablers and barriers to participation and collaboration are discussed and the need for specific community building research is cited as critical for the success of MERIC within a broad metadata community

Research and Development Workstation Environment: the new class of Current Research Information Systems

Against the backdrop of the development of modern technologies in the field of scientific research the new class of Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) and related intelligent information technologies has arisen. It was called - Research and Development Workstation Environment (RDWE) - the comprehensive problem-oriented information systems for scientific research and development lifecycle support. The given paper describes design and development fundamentals of the RDWE class systems. The RDWE class system's generalized information model is represented in the article as a three-tuple composite web service that include: a set of atomic web services, each of them can be designed and developed as a microservice or a desktop application, that allows them to be used as an independent software separately; a set of functions, the functional filling-up of the Research and Development Workstation Environment; a subset of atomic web services that are required to implement function of composite web service. In accordance with the fundamental information model of the RDWE class the system for supporting research in the field of ontology engineering - the automated building of applied ontology in an arbitrary domain area, scientific and technical creativity - the automated preparation of application documents for patenting inventions in Ukraine was developed. It was called - Personal Research Information System. A distinctive feature of such systems is the possibility of their problematic orientation to various types of scientific activities by combining on a variety of functional services and adding new ones within the cloud integrated environment. The main results of our work are focused on enhancing the effectiveness of the scientist's research and development lifecycle in the arbitrary domain area.Comment: In English, 13 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, added references in Russian. Published. Prepared for special issue (UkrPROG 2018 conference) of the scientific journal "Problems of programming" (Founder: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Software Systems of NAS Ukraine

Volitional-supported learning with Open Educational Resources

User-centred web applications such as Wikis or Weblogs are becoming increasingly popular. In contrast to the early Internet, these applications especially focus on the participation of people, on the creation, sharing and modifying of content and on an easy access. Based on this, they are assumed to contribute to self-regulated and life-long learning which is on the agenda of most industrialized countries throughout Europe. However, as shown in the recently published road mapping work of the Open E-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project, comprehensive frameworks for learning processes that make use of Open Educational Resources (OER) are missing. In particular it remains unclear how OER can actually contribute to forms of self-regulated learning since this requires a great deal of volitional competence, i.e. the ability to deal with distractions and fluctuations of motivation or emotion which is therefore regarded as a crucial factor (Deimann & Keller, 2006). In this regard, the Volitional Design Model (Deimann, 2007) provides a useful instrument to unfold the potentials of OER by (1) targeting key aspects of the learner’s behaviour in the learning process, and (2) suggesting powerful strategies to tackle decreased motivation. An exemplified volitional design approach using OER will be discussed. (DIPF/Orig.

Real‐time interactive social environments: A review of BT's generic learning platform

Online learning in particular and lifelong learning in general require a learning platform that makes sense both pedagogically and commercially. This paper sets out to describe what we mean by generic, learning and platform. The technical requirements are described, and various trials that test the technical, educational and commercial nature of the platform are described Finally, the future developments planned for the Real‐time Interactive Social Environments (RISE) are discusse

Reviews

Managing Change in Higher Education: A Learning Environment Architecture by Peter Ford and eight other authors, Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and the Open University Press, 1996. ISBN 0–335–19791–4. 161 pages, paperback. No price indicated